The Correct “A Nightmare on Elm Street” Bridge

While stalking the Venice Canals (the history of which you can read about on yesterday’s post about Lana Clarkson’s former home) with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, last July, he mentioned that there was some misinformation floating around online about the Venice Canal bridge that appeared in the 1984 horror flick A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Mike explained that every filming location website and book seemed to have a differing opinion as to which of the area’s nine bridges were used in the production and that he had long wanted to clear up the confusion once and for all.  And that right there is why I love Mike – the guy is meticulous in his reporting.  It seriously irks me when people post erroneous location information online or in books.  I am of the opinion that if you are going to take the time to write a blog or publish a book, you should also take the time to make sure the information you are putting forth is valid.  So Mike and I decided right then and there to finally set the record straight about the locale, even though I had never actually seen A Nightmare on Elm Street.

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In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) and Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) discuss the “Balinese way of dreaming” while standing on a white-trellised bridge overlooking the Venice Canals.  Thankfully, Mike was fairly certain that he knew which bridge had been featured in the movie prior to the start of our hunt.  So, iPad in hand, we headed right on over to it.

We quickly scanned through A Nightmare on Elm Street (thank you iTunes!) to the bridge scene and tried to compare the homes visible in the background to the homes near the bridge where Mike thought filming had taken place.  Sure enough, he almost immediately spotted a unique house with a corner balcony and rounded windows that matched up perfectly to what had appeared onscreen.  Eureka!

While the trees surrounding the house (which is pictured below from the opposite direction that it was pictured in the movie) have grown considerably over the past 28 years (how in the heck has Johnny Depp not aged in all that time, by the way?!?!), it still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did back in 1984 when A Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed, as you can see below.  Unfortunately, there was too much foliage covering the side of the house that appeared in Nightmare, so I was not able to take a photograph of it from the same direction.

But you can see in the aerial view pictured below that the house’s two arched windows and corner balcony match up perfectly to what appeared onscreen.

On an Elm Street side note – A fascinating article about Heather Langenkamp, the actress who portrayed “Nancy Thompson” in three of the horror series’ installments, was published in the July 29, 2011 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine.  You can check it out here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.  And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding the CORRECT A Nightmare on Elm Street bridge! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The correct A Nightmare on Elm Street bridge connects Linnie Avenue to Court C, crossing over the Eastern Canal, at the Venice Canals in Venice.  It is denoted with an orange arrow in the above aerial view.  The camera was facing southeast, toward Washington Boulevard, in the movie.